The Bund Naturschutz (BN) will sue against the new Bavarian wolf ordinance, which is intended to make it easier to kill conspicuous wolves. The board of the organization has now officially decided that. “With the regulation, the state government, on the instructions of Prime Minister Markus Söder, is opposed to European regulations for the protection of nature and the Federal Nature Conservation Act, which the CSU and the Free State of Bavaria, like all federal states, have agreed to,” said BN boss Richard Mergner. “We cannot accept that unchallenged, which is why we will file a lawsuit against the wolf ordinance with the Bavarian Administrative Court.” According to Mergner, a law firm is already working on the lawsuit.
At the same time, the BN boss sharply criticized the state government. “With their new regulation, Söder and his ministers have not only ignored their own laws and their wolf management plan,” said Mergner. “But they also wantonly destroyed the consensus with us nature conservation associations.” In addition, the BN boss held the state government responsible if there were more attacks by wolves on sheep and other livestock in the upcoming grazing season. “Because the farmers think now that the wolf can be shot down more easily, fences and other herd protection measures are no longer necessary,” said Mergner. “But that is a big mistake.”
A lawsuit was expected in the state government. After all, they know there that the wolf ordinance is treading on “very thin ice” from a legal point of view. That’s how Vice Prime Minister Hubert Aiwanger (FW) put it days ago. Nevertheless, he called on the nature conservation organizations to refrain from legal action. Now Aiwanger called the BN “unworldly” and “ideological”. The organization harms nature and biodiversity in the mountains with its attitude. “We have to decide between wolf and mountain pasture there.”
Agriculture Minister Michaela Kaniber (CSU) said that the state government “could not simply continue to watch the increasing threat to grazing animals posed by wolves”. That’s why you acted. It’s about a lot: “Preventing animal suffering on the pastures, securing farmers’ livelihoods, preserving biodiversity on alpine pastures and Alps and preserving our beautiful cultural landscape. And in the worst case, people’s physical integrity.”
The state parliament opposition welcomed the lawsuit. “A state government that disregards applicable national and European law out of pure election campaign calculations allows no other reaction than to complain about the legal plugging,” said the Greens parliamentary group leader Ludwig Hartmann. “In a few months, the wolf ordinance will go down in history with the note: ‘There was nothing but campaign noise’https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/.” SPD leader Florian von Brunn was also confident that the BN before the VGH will be right. He also spoke of a “populist election campaign” Söder wanted to distract from “his failure to build apartments and wind turbines.”
The State Association for the Protection of Birds (LBV) also considers the wolf ordinance to be illegal, as the head of the association, Norbert Schäffer, said. Nevertheless, they want to refrain from filing a lawsuit there. “On the one hand, another lawsuit does not add any legal weight,” said Schäffer. “On the other hand, we must continue to struggle for solutions – especially for the farmers.” Because the farmers, especially in the mountain regions, are not helped by the new wolf ordinance, even if a district office should approve the shooting of a wolf on their basis.